Reading the MB about rewriting the 2nd Amendment brought this to mind.
Should we have an amenedment that guarentees the individual a right to privacy? It’s considered an implied right know and seem’s pretty well accepted, but it isn’t specified.
My suggestion would be:
The right to privacy of thought and action of any natural born citizen of the United States may not be abridged, regulated or otherwise restricted by law unless a clear, complelling and reasonable public purpose for same can be demonstrated.
“Public Purpose” would need to be defined, but that’s what lawyers and courts are for.
The intent would be to serve notice that the right of the individual to privacy (a term also in need of definition), takes precendence over “for their own good”, type of arguements.
Opens a whole can of worms too, as it limits the ability of government to respond to current political/ethical/moral/religous fads with intrusive laws that never go away.
Just a thought but with individual right being eroded away, it may be a necessary idea.
Against stupidity, the very Gods themselves contend in vain - F. Schiller
If we were to amend every vague wording of our founding documents, it would eliminate the system of checks and balances that our country was founded upon.
The Supreme Court interprets these documents, and the beautiful thing is that their interpretations can change as the times dictate, which is as it should be.
For example, had we put in some more specific wording in an ammendment in, say, 1980, how would this wording deal with the internet, which is totally new and has opened up a whole new can of worms?
If you say the Courts, then why make this ammendment to negin with? If you say, “well, ammend that,” after a while, our document will look NOTHING like how it was written all those years ago, and I don’t think this is a good thing.
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Every new amendment that has been added is dealing with something which was not dealt with in any way, and there was no other recourse. That is not the case with this.
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Your first statement is somewhat of a slippery slope argument, and it also assumes that one day the Supreme Court will go against all of the decisions which support this idea and say, we changed our minds. It takes a serious error to get completely overturned like that, akin to Dredd Scott, and I don’t think this issue is up there with that, do you? Why?
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During times of war, which is what spurned on the internment of all Asian-Americans during WWII, bad decisions are made, often without regard to the laws themselves. Even under the laws as they were understood in the '40s, what was done was wrong. Making new laws would not have helped, if people are set to break them.
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There already is a right to privacy in the Constitution. Read the Fourth Amendment. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Note that this clause prevents the government from poking around in your affairs; if you’re trying to get the population in general to leave you alone, hassle your state legislature for laws you think appropriate. Good luck, though; I can’t imagine any legislative body that would want to bother extending the rights already granted in the Fourth Amendment to prevent private citizens from bothering one another. Don’t want a state full of hermits; we already have West Virginia.
About the shameful decision to limit the movements of/encamp Japanese Americans during World War II: the Supreme Court subjected the discriminatory treatment to the strictest of scrutiny, and they decided that, in times of war, the government has a overwhelmingly compelling interest in national security that can defeat a due process or equal protection (14th Amendment) challenge. I doubt such a thing would happen today, because, given the state of modern communication, keeping people from walking down a particular street isn’t particularly effective in keeping the national secrets under wraps. It could work in 1940, though.
Eep. Rather than ‘granted’ I should say ‘reserved’. The Bill of Rights enumerates rights that the people possess inherently. The government doesn’t have the power to grant or deny those rights, nor the other rights possessed by the people that aren’t listed but are reserved by the Ninth Amendment.
California has a specific right to privacy enumerated in its state constitution. If you want an interesting peek into what would happen nationwide should such a right be enshrined in our federal constitution, take a look at the litigation under California’s right.
As for the amendment of our Constitution:
It is true that there have been several amendments this century. But one can perhaps note that A) the latest amendment actually comes from the very earliest history of the Constitution (it just didn’t get ratified until a few years ago), and B) You really have to take out the two amendments dealing with Prohibition, which most everyone admits was a mistake. Once we look at it that way, we see that we really don’t touch the document very often, and generally only when something has gone ‘wrong’ (e.g. the 22nd Amendment).
But I have to agree with Cyrix on the issue of the stability of the supposed right of ‘privacy’ found to lurk in the interstices of Constitutional rights by the Court in the 60’s and early 70’s. While the result in cases like Griswold v. Connecticut can easily by supported under such an analysis, it is likely that an eventual revisiting of the issues in Roe v. Wade will force the Court to consider whether the loose language finding such a right to exist was such a good idea. Absent specific enumeration, no ‘right’ is assured constitutionally.
The police and other governmental agents. Exactly who are you trying to keep out of your affairs? You never said who you want privacy from.
There are laws against murder, but that doesn’t mean people don’t get murdered. Similarly, there are laws against harrassment by the government, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. So? How would writing another law make that different?
The Fourth Amendment does indeed protect the individual from having the product of an illegal search introduced as evidence in court. However, it also protects the right to be secure in one’s personal effects and, if that right is violated, the individual has grounds for a civil lawsuit against the violating agency and/or employee. I don’t see how another law would improve this situation.
I think we all agree that the law generally walks all over those under 18, inasmuch as they are unable to vote and therefore have no real representation. Teenagers also tend to be poorly organized and therefore unable to effect grass-roots change. But that’s a completely different debate, unless you want to talk about the right of students to have privacy in their lockers/bookbags/what have you.
Limiting speech on the net is not the same thing as locking people up in camps. Should we ever face the same situation again, it’s up to the people to keep the government in check, and, with today’s instantaneous communication, plus news organizations constantly scrutinizing the government, it’s unlikely that either lockups or the limiting of speech could be slipped past without a massive public uproar. Again, this is a different topic from the right to privacy, so unless you want this thread to diverge, I’ll leave off here. My only intent in posting about the WWII situation was to give a history lesson, not to say that the Supreme Court’s actions were right or to open another debate.
In addition to the guarantees against illegal search and seizure in the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court is on record as declaring that there is a right to privacy inuring in the various unenumerated rights guaranteed by the Ninth Amendment. (Griswold v. Connecticut) The only exception that I am certain of as regards this is that it does not apply to private acts of sodomy prohibited by state penal code. (Whatsizname v. Georgia]) So far as I know, the only two Ninth Amendment rights which the Court has seen fit to spell out are the right to travel (various cases relative to people who had recently moved, including one dealing with welfare benefits and a specific residency requirement for them) and the Griswold right to privacy, which related to the right of a married couple to legally purchase and use contraceptive devices. It gave rise to one of the great S.C. quotes, IIRC “The instant [i.e., presently-under-consideration] statute is an uncommonly foolish law.” You seldom get a judge being that frank.
The only exception that I am certain of as regards this is that it does not apply to private acts of sodomy prohibited by state penal code. (Whatsizname v. Georgia])
I think that was about underage sodomy? What about other consensual acts between adults? Or sodomy between adults for that matter? Most of the so called ‘blue laws’ have been repealed (or just ignored for the time being). But nothing prevented them from being passed. And should the moral/political climate change, they could be enforced again.
So far as I know, the only two Ninth Amendment rights which the Court has seen fit to spell out are the right to travel (various cases relative to people who had recently moved, including one dealing with welfare benefits and a specific residency requirement for them) and the Griswold right to privacy, which related to the right of a married couple to legally purchase and use contraceptive devices. It gave rise to one of the great S.C. quotes, IIRC “The instant [i.e., presently-under-consideration] statute is an uncommonly foolish law.” You seldom get a judge being that frank.
On the other hand, until someone took it to Court, how may people dutifully followed this “uncommonly foolish” law. And would a clearly enumerated right (versus an implied right) have stopped this kind of foolishness? I think it would have made legislatures think first and maybe not act so foolishly.
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Against stupidity, the very Gods themselves contend in vain - F. Schiller
So despite the clearly enumerated right of privacy, government can and will take actions in direct violation of that right?
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
The case was Bowers v Hardwick 478 U.S. 186 (1986). The police showed up at Michael hardwick’s home and were let in by someone who did not live there. Hardwick and another man were in Hardwick’s bedroom with the door closed. The police entered the room, saw Hardwick and the other man engaged in oral sex and arrested them. Hardwick’s first comment upon seeing the officers: “What are you doing in my bedroom?” The charges were later dismissed but Hardwick filed suit over the arrest. Bowers was the attorney general of Georgia (who, during his later campaign for governor, was revealed to have been engaged at the time in an adulterous affair in violation of Georgia statute, although no charges were filed). A 5-4 Supreme Court, ignoring the fact that Georgia’s law applied equally to heterosexual and homosexual acts, ruled “The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy. None of the fundamental rights announced in this Court’s prior cases involving family relationships, marriage, or procreation bear any resemblance to the right asserted in this case. And any claim that those cases stand for the proposition that any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable.” Justice Powell, the fifth vote to uphold the statute, later said after he left the bench that the minority in Bowers “had the better argument.” Too little too late, Justice Powell. Burn in Hell. The Georgia state supreme court later ruled unconstitutional the sodomy statute under the state’s privacy right. Romer v Evans 517 U.S. 620 (1996) is viewed by some constitutional scholars as implicitly overruling Bowers, although there has not been a real test case.
The right isn’t enumerated. Its an interpretation of the Court. Their arguement was that even though the Constitution doesn’t say you have a right to privacy, their are enumerated rights that indicate that there is one. Another interpretation is that the Court decided their ought to be such a right and created it.
